212 



EMIL HADAC 



I would like to bring in a striking example of this nature from a region far 

 from the Arctic. In high mountains of the Iraqi Kurdistan, A.D.Q. Agnew and 

 I found two well-defined plant communities side by side: a community of 

 Prurigos feru/acea and Astragalus kurdicus (sect. Tragacanthd) and other more 

 or less endemic species, which have survived there or in the neighborhood 

 from the Tertiary. We also noted some other hygrophytic communities of an 

 alliance which we call Primuleto-Blysmion compressi, with Primula auriculata 

 and not few European or Eurasiatic elements like Eleocharis quinqueflora. 

 Car ex panicea, C. distans, Juncus Gerardii, Juncus inflexus, Trigloc/iin palustre, 

 Deschampsia ccespitosa, Sagina saginoides, Cerastium cerastoides, etc., 

 practically without any local endemic element. This last community immi- 

 grated into this area very probably during the Second or Third Pluvial. 



Table 1 



The Occurrence (in %) in Certain Plant Communities of Plants belonging to Various 



Geographical Groups 



But this holds true not only for plants : in the communities of the order 

 Prangetalia live reptiles and insects of an Irano-Turanian type of distribution, 

 whereas in the alliance Primuleto-Blysmion we meet frogs like Raua ridibunda 

 and Hyla arborea — typically European or Eurasiatic — or "European" insects 

 like Tipula maxima, T. lunata, T. lateralis. Pales crocata, and P. pratensis (J. 

 Slipka, unpubl.). We can thus state that not only plant communities, but 

 whole biocoenoses migrate step by step, even if their individual members 

 could migrate over long distances. 



Obviously, the history of the Arctic flora is very intricate. It is not easy to 



